The Future of Customer Experience: 10 Predictions for 2016 and Beyond

It’s always interesting to hear predictions and trends for the coming year. For 2016, I’ve elected to share my views on the (fast approaching) future of customer experience through the lens of other experts as well.

As usual, this list isn’t comprehensive. Given the speed and pace of change in all things customer experience-related, it can’t be. It’s even hard to effectively define what customer experience is, when viewed through the eyes of the ecosystem involved with delivering it.

From the customer perspective however, it remains clear: Customer experience is the sum total of how customers feel as they engage with your company and brand over time, as a result of how well your interactions with them meet their expectations and fulfill their wants and needs.

In other words, if your customers like you and enjoy doing business with you, they’ll continue to do so. If they don’t, they won’t. And it continues to get easier for customers to vote against those they don’t enjoy with their feet, thumbs and mice.

Which makes it even more important that you take note of the predictions and trends I’ve shared below…

If customer experience isn’t your priority… you’ll lose. As commoditization across industries becomes even more prevalent, the importance of differentiated customer experiences continues to increase – evidenced by the fact that 89 percent of companies expect to compete mostly on the basis of CX in 2016, versus 36 percent just five years ago. (Gartner).

If your customers don’t like the experience they have with you, they’ll leave. There are many studies supporting the notion that 80 to 90 percent of customers that have a bad experience will leave, with little chance of returning. You don’t need research to understand the logic of this. (But in case you do: SDL, Qmatic, Oracle, Forrester…)

Customer self-service continues to be critical to a good experience. According to one study, nearly a third of consumers would rather clean a toilet than talk to customer service. What else can I possibly say to that? (Aspect)

Engaged customers are valuable customers. Yes, engagement is hard to measure and difficult to create. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. Engaged customers buy 50 percent more frequently, spend 200 percent more each year and are 5 times more likely to indicate it is the only brand they would purchase in the future. (Rosetta)

Millennials will matter more than ever. Now some 25 percent of the US population and commanding every greater purchase power, this highly influential cohort is influencing the buying decisions and customer experience expectations of everyone. And they’re less different than you might expect. (MeNG)

Customer experience is mobile. As important as “omnichannel” experiences are, they’re increasingly driven by one channel over others. And that channel is mobile. This means anytime, anywhere access for anyone–even if there’s a PC on the desk in from of them. (KPCB)

Your technology needs to work – seamlessly and flawlessly. Amazon, Google and others have radically reshaped what customers expect from your tech. Unsurprisingly, 93 percent of business leader’s worldwide said technology had changed customer expectations in the past five to 10 years. (EMC)

Customer experience leaders focus on employee and workplace experience. The correlation between happier, more productive employees and better customer experience is strong. This is one reason that EX (employee experience) and WX (Workplace experience) are among the fastest growing areas of experience design. (Fjord)

[Mar 23-24, 2017, Barcelona] An internationally recognized program with proven track record of success - being run for 56 times in 19 cities and has trained up CX professionals from 67 countries on six continents. The program is developed based on the Branded CEM Method which provides a strategic framework, statistically proven applications and an emotion curve tool to help enterprises to deliver differentiated experience in driving C-SAT, retention and NPS without spending extra resource.

CGS understands the mission-critical nature of customer experience. We consider each of our 45+ million interactions annually as unique opportunities to exceed expectations, building long-lasting relationships with your customers. Named to IAOP’s 2016 Global Outsourcing 100®, we help some of the world’s best-run companies create memorable experiences by providing multilingual customer support from simple requests to complex technical support challenges.